Thoughts on transportation issues in America generally, San Francisco specifically, and the Mission District most of all.

Friday, April 24

It might be cold and windy...

...but at least it's raining.

We said goodbye to our Ghent hosts and set out a bit later than planned, stopping first to pick up gloves and then for some great coffee a chocolate duck (who was brought to slaughter in shprt order) and a beer to help weather the cold.

We set out, bravely, against the wind.

The entire route followed a canal. We will make the entire trip without getting lost. This feat we will not accomplish twice. The weather sslowly improved. We took a break in the only post industrial town I have seen in Belgium. We have a mad good snack: young gouda dipped in spicy Ghent mustard.

Because john has turned spainiard, he is ravenous by 2pm. We stop in st. Joris for a normandanische pannekoek.

And I accidentially got drunk.

Causality is tricky, but shortly thereafter, we were lost.

But the weather further improved and we found our way. We also found some old fortifeid bunkers from one of the many times Belgium was invaded. They were facing east. Here is john having his try at invading Belgium.

Not quite. Here you can see the trees that now grow atop these bunkers, which i want to csll abandon, but come to think of it probably got 8 only days of use by belgians before they surrendered to Germany.

From there, we made it to Brugge. Shortest ride of the trip.

If visiting Ghent was about understanding my countrrfactual life as an educated young Belgian, Brugge was about imaging the middle ages. The entire city is a UNESCO world herrirage site-it's the best preserved old city in Europe. Here is why: no one in the business of flattening Holland has ever cared enough to obliterate Brugge. Napolean, Charles V, Hitler just didn't care. Ironically, the city's historical irrelevance has made it one of the biggest tourist attractions in Europe.

The locals, so far as we can tell, are all juvenile delquients. We spent more time than we should have drinkng genevere with some kids who later snuck under a barbed-wire fence to climb the scaffolding around an old church tower. In a rare display of judgement, we didn't join them.